Sep 21, 2015

 

Repairs usually leave you frustrated. Rarely do you come away more in love with a product, a design, and a manufacturer.

 

Recently our almost-ten-year-old, and very heavily used, Dyson DC14 upright vacuum broke. In no way was the result of bad design, inferior workmanship or materials etc. Instead it was a simple accident, when a well-intentioned 10 year old accidentally dropped the vacuum, and the u-bend assembly impacted on the edge of hardwood stairs. With the full weight of the upright behind it the part didn't have a chance.

 

 

Fixing household appliances is usually a nightmare – expensive parts, bad design, skinned knuckles, etc. But every aspect of making the repair to this vacuum left me more in love with the product, the design, and the company.

 

Ordering The Replacement Part

There was clearly no way to repair the broken part – a replacement would be needed. The Dyson website indicated that ours was an older model and that a call to Dyson Canada would be required.

It took only a moment to get through and the agent that answered, Normand Bareberaho, was incredibly helpful. He quickly determined that the needed part was not available here in Canada and promised to get back to me asap.

On his own initiative Normand contacted the Dyson warehouse in the US to see if they had any suitable U-bend Assemblies (the part that you need) and, sure enough, they did. Norman was an absolute pleasure to work with and the first exceptional part of this experience.

The next was the price. I have been involved in a lot of appliance repairs lately and continue to shake my head in disgust at the prices often charged for replacement parts. I was expecting the worst. It was a truly pleasant surprise when Normand told me that the part would cost just $10.00, with just $5.99 more for shipping from the US.

 

Making The Repair

Once the part arrived I set aside some time for what I assumed would be a very difficult repair. The part attaches to the bottom of the vacuum, snakes around some parts, and I assumed several parts might have to be dislodged to remove it.

And, indeed, things got off to a scary start when I couldn't even find any screws to attack. I started to worry that parts would have to be pried off.

 

 

The my son noticed a plastic latch. One push on that latch and the broken u-bend slid right off. Then the new one slid right on. Once my son spotted the latch the entire repair took about fifteen seconds.

We then noticed that all the parts air flowed through were attached the same way. If anything was every jammed in the airway this approach to design would make it easy to clear out.

 

The entire process was one pleasant surprise after another and I could not have been more please with the company, their people, their policy and their product.

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